Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer: zero-★’s (Black Monday #000000)
I heard last week that one of my patients sadly succumbed to COVID-19. This is not the first person with MS to die of COVID-19 but is a reminder of how fickle life can be. I have contacted my patient’s partner to say how sorry I am. The question I am asking myself is; could this death have been prevented? Yes, almost certainly. However, I suppose this answer applies to all COVID-19 related deaths.
Although the official global death toll from COVID-19 is 4.6m the unofficial estimate is 15.2m (95%CI 9.4m-18.2m), which means most of us will know someone who has died of COVID-19 (see The Economist; The pandemic’s true death toll, 5th Sept. 2021).
We should count ourselves lucky in the UK because we have a very high vaccination rate that has clearly reduced the number of people getting severe COVID-19 and dying from COVID-19. Sadly, however, being double-vaccinated is no guarantee of protection. Data from Public Health England (PHE) reveals that of all the people who died within 28 days of testing positive for the delta variant between 1 February and 19 July, 49% (224) had had two vaccine doses; almost all of these people, 220, were aged 50 or older (Public Health England. Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: technical briefings. 23 July).
What does this mean for pwMS? This means we are not out of the woods yet. Please remain vigilant and careful. This particularly applies to those of you who have not been vaccinated and those on an anti-CD20 or S1P-modulator, in whom vaccine responses are likely to be blunted. People with MS are being classified by the government as being vulnerable and hence you will be offered a booster dose later this year.
For those of you who have lost a loved one to COVID-19, there is a very good series of articles in this week’s BMJ on grief and grieving, which I recommend you read. Lucy Selman’s essay touched a raw nerve when I read it and many of the issues she discusses are particularly pertinent to how I am feeling this morning. It is hard, harder than you think, being a healthcare professional during the pandemic.
Lucy Selman. Covid grief has cracked us open: how clinicians respond could reshape attitudes to bereavement. BMJ 2021; 374 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1803 (Published 10 August 2021)
Excerpts:
……. For people working in healthcare, grief brings home the ultimate futility of medicine as a lifesaving endeavour. Despite the best efforts of doctors, we all eventually die. Grief teaches us that medicine is about so much more than extending life.
…… Accommodating the ubiquity of sadness, loss, and grief makes some separation and compartmentalisation seem inevitable, even a useful coping strategy, for those who practise medicine.
……. Clinicians are often encouraged or required, overtly or implicitly, to disregard and not talk about their own grief in the name of efficient patient care. Despite evidence of significant grief among clinicians, patient deaths are often not discussed.
…… But sequestering grief into the “private” realm outside of medical practice can have unintended negative consequences for clinicians and patients and their families, rendering us all more alone. Denying grief, hiding it away, hiving it off to a personal self, distinct from the professional, is to deny its place in life and to deny our humanity. In the context of a pandemic in which colleagues, patients, and loved ones have died, leaving no room at the table for grief renders life inauthentic.
…… Working with death and grief elides professional barriers. It urges us to bring our vulnerability with us, meeting the patient as a person but also, crucially, bringing our own person with us. That does not mean burdening patients with our own suffering or failing to maintain helpful boundaries. Rather, responding with compassion towards patients requires us to understand and respect our own need to process emotions.
……. Grief prompts us to consider how we treat ourselves as well as how we treat the person in front of us professionally. Being open about our own experiences of grief, and showing the strength of vulnerability, is a powerful statement to patients, carers, and colleagues that can help shift society’s attitude to grief. Individually, this can bring about a deepening and maturity of medical practice. Bringing the insights that grief affords into our professional and personal lives could have huge personal and societal benefits.
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General Disclaimer: Please note that the opinions expressed here are those of Professor Giovannoni and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry nor Barts Health NHS Trust and are not meant to be interpreted as personal clinical advice.
